From Player to Architect: Redesigning the Game of Performance (23 Jul 2026)

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 13:00:00 GMT

What if the problem isn’t the people? What if it’s the game itself?

Session Overview: Most organizations are working hard to improve performance… yet people are more overwhelmed, disengaged, exhausted, and frustrated than ever. We keep updating processes, tools, training, and expectations—but something deeper still isn’t working.

What if the problem isn’t the people? What if it’s the game itself?

In this powerful and perspective-shifting session, Jessica Tietjen explores the invisible “game of performance” shaping how we work, lead, succeed, and survive. A game built through decades of cultural conditioning, workplace systems, incentives, expectations, and definitions of success that most of us never consciously chose—but learned to operate within.

The challenge? Many of the rules driving today’s workplaces were designed for a completely different world. And while the world has changed, most performance systems haven’t. Through a neuroscience-informed and systems-based lens, this session invites leaders to step outside the game long enough to finally see it—how it shapes behavior, limits growth, strains human capacity, and quietly reinforces the very problems organizations are trying to solve. Participants will walk away with a radically different perspective on performance, leadership, and transformation—along with a new way to think about what it really means to evolve from simply playing the game… to becoming someone capable of redesigning it.

Because the future doesn’t need better players. It needs more architects.

Session Takeaways

In this session, participants will explore:

● Why so many performance practices feel exhausting, disconnected, or ineffective—even when everyone is working harder than ever.

● Why many workplace performance challenges are not people problems—but predictable outcomes of the systems people are operating within.

● How the rapidly changing terrain of today’s world has outpaced the performance practices and survival systems designed for a different era.

● How shifting perspective changes what we see about ourselves, our organizations, and the invisible game we’ve been taught to play.

About the Speaker:

Jessica Tietjen

Jessica Tietjen is an organizational and leadership strategist, speaker, and systems thinker focused on helping people and organizations evolve the way performance, leadership, and human development are designed. Through a neuroscience-informed and deeply human approach, she helps leaders move beyond outdated models of work built for survival, compliance, and efficiency—and toward environments that unlock greater creativity, courage, compassion, adaptability, and sustainable performance.

As the founder of Evolving to Exceptional and creator of frameworks including Performance Partnering™, NeuroOnboarding™, and the NeuroUpgrade Framework™, and the Human Operating System, Jessica’s work bridges neuroscience, systems thinking, leadership development, organizational transformation, and human behavior. Her work challenges leaders to stop simply optimizing broken systems and begin redesigning the conditions that shape how people think, feel, learn, relate, and perform.

Her mission is to accelerate the development of architects—leaders with the courage, creativity, and compassion needed to evolve themselves to become capable of reinventing ways of working, rewriting the rules of success, and redesigning systems to positively impact people’s performance in a rapidly changing world.

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We look forward to seeing you at this in-person only event.

What Can OD Become? Organization Agility in an AI World (28 Aug 2026)

Fri, 28 Aug 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Organization Agility in an AI World with Dr. Chris Worley

Session Overview: Join us for this very special session with Dr. Chris Worley, globally recognized pioneer, leading author, and preeminent authority in the fields of organization development, agility, and design. Dr. Worley will explore why organizational agility is not just relevant but essential in today’s AI-enabled world. As obvious as that may sound (to OD practitioners), there are significant challenges to address about what agility is (and what it is not), why leadership teams often hesitate when they understand the implications of agility, and how OD can help to address issues related to agility transformation in an AI-enabled world. In the future, OD will leverage its foundational skills but must also grapple with the competencies that need to be developed.

This event is made possible through the collaboration of the St. Louis Organization Development Network (STLODN) and Saint Louis University (SLU), specifically the MA in Leadership and Organizational Development and the Industrial-Organizational Psychology Ph.D. programs.

Session Takeaways: Participants will leave this session with:

An actionable agility framework
A list of foundational and future competencies
Why an AI policy becomes important

About the Speaker:

Dr. Christopher Worley

Dr. Christopher Worley is a Clinical Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Rennes School of Business (France), the Research Professor Emeritus of Management at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School ofBusiness. He is a recognized leader in the field of organization agility, organization development, and organization design. Prior to Pepperdine, he was the founding Strategy Director at the Center for Leadership and Effective Organizations at the NEOMA Business School in France, a Senior Research Scientist at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, Chair of the Academy of Management’s Organization Development and Change division, and Director of the Master of Science in Organization (MSOD) program at Pepperdine University. He received the McGregor Award from the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Pepperdine University’s Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellowship. Dr. Worley is co-author of The Agility Factor, Becoming Agile, Management Reset, Built to Change, Integrated Strategic Change, co-editor of two volumes of the Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness series, and co-author of seven editions of Organization Development and Change.

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We look forward to seeing you at this in-person only event.

Parking: Free parking provided @Laclede Parking Garage, 3602 Laclede Ave, St. Louis, MO 63108

St. Louis Organization Development Network upcoming events

From Player to Architect: Redesigning the Game of Performance (23 Jul 2026)

What Can OD Become? Organization Agility in an AI World (28 Aug 2026)